Any effect on SEO from using tables?

[spenceb]

Hi,

Wondering if putting information in tables has any effect on search engine placement?

It is much easier (for me at least) to lay things out cleanly using tables, but I don't know if spiders or whatever see information in tables any differently than if it were just placed in the body of a page, without being in a table.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated!

Thanks

Brad Spence

[webmaster]

If you use properly formed HTML tables should not cause you any ill SERP effects

[MikeNY]

Good question and thanks for the answr Morgan, how would we know if the table is properly formed? Shall we assume that if we use the table option in the REW cms that it is obviously properly formed? ( I assume yes )
Thanks!

[spenceb]

Thanks Morgan...you too Michael. I would assume that is the case as well, but would be good to know before I get too far along building pages.

Thanks

Brad

[Zafar Ahmed]

The only thing that interrupts spiders from indexing your website is "frames".

[spenceb]

Thanks Zafar -

Does an iframe on a page cause the whole page to be overlooked, or are you saying just the info within the frame is not indexed?

Brad

[jseville]

Awesome question because I'm about to post the ultimate condo guide in my blog using the new tables....

j

[Portland Real Estate]

The content within the iframe is seen as external content and it's not included, but if there is enough content on the rest of the page then the page's content should still get indexed just fine.

[Dwell Atlanta]

I don't think so but I prefer <div>, tables are just a pain..

[MikeNY]

I don't think so but I prefer <div>, tables are just a pain..

Jason do you have an example of what the <div> output looks like? I only know what a table is/does.

Thanks.